I got home to find Jean-Loup setting the table for lunch. I told him I had decided that I wanted the court proceedings to be open to the media and the public. Very calmly, he replied that it was up to me and he understood. Almost as if he had known it was coming.

  After we’d finished eating, I called Stéphane.

  ‘Are you sure, Gisèle?’ he asked, astonished at my change of heart.

  A little later he and Antoine called me back to ask me to think it over. They gave me a week. But I had made my decision. It liberated me. The next morning I called to tell them I was sure. Straight afterwards I phoned Caroline. She was pleased; she hadn’t forgotten that our first lawyer had suggested this nearly four years ago. David and Florian also approved. Of course, none of us could imagine the coming storm – it was impossible to foresee. Nor did I wish for it. We agreed that I would be in court for the first two weeks of the trial, after which my lawyers and their team would speak on my behalf. When I’m struggling, I hide myself away. And it was those bastards I wanted to be put in the spotlight, not me.

  Today, looking back on the moment I made the decision, I am aware that had I been twenty years younger, I probably wouldn’t have dared request that the case be heard in open court. I would have been too afraid of the looks: those damn looks that women of my generation have always had to contend with; those damn looks that make you waver in the morning between a dress and trousers, that follow you or ignore you, flatter you or embarrass you; those damn looks that seem to tell you who you are or what you’re worth, only to forsake you as you age. It was exactly that nerve Dominique pressed when he told me I should be glad my husband still desired me whenever he photographed me coming out of the bathroom. I was, no doubt, still susceptible to it. It’s foolish, but that’s how we were – freer, more autonomous women, yet still afraid of being abandoned, still longing to be saved. Maybe the shame lifts once you hit seventy and no one looks at you any more. I don’t know. I wasn’t afraid of my wrinkles or my body. I loved Jean-Loup and he loved me. Happiness was certainly a factor in my decision.

  * * *

  • • •

  ‘This changes everything, Gisèle,’ Antoine and Stéphane told me. ‘We shall have to prepare for this in a different way.’ They explained that the projection of so many videos of this nature had never occurred before in the entire history of the legal system, and that it was bound to be widely reported and discussed in the media. It was imperative that I watch them beforehand to prepare myself, so that it didn’t blow up in my face during the trial.

  I hadn’t thought of that. I’d imagined I’d be able to leave the courtroom while the videos were being shown, irrespective of whether the trial was held in public. But no, I wasn’t going to be able to avoid them. It would be impossible for the public to see them and not me.

  So one day I sat down in the study in front of the computer. Jean-Loup sorted out the technical settings, then I asked him to leave the room and made him swear that he would never watch what I was about to see. He closed the door behind him. I knew that he would remain close by in case I called for him.

  Stéphane was online from his office in Paris, though I would have preferred him not to be. I’d rather have been alone while I watched them. We switched off our cameras so I could just hear his voice. He would be sending the links to the videos, one by one.

  I opened the first one.

  I saw a dead woman in darkness.

  She was snoring loudly.

  I saw her hands were bound.

  Her feet too.

  ‘If it’s too much, we’ll stop,’ Stéphane said.

  I said I wanted to continue.

  He sent another video.

  Then another. Each time, he told me what I was about to see.

  I saw her mouth forced open. I saw her suffocate and choke. And the husband and the rapist didn’t stop.

  I saw animals.

  I heard them whispering.

  I saw a courgette.

  I heard Dominique mutter, ‘Easy does it.’

  I saw him rape me.

  Dominique, almighty in the cesspool of the human soul.

  My body, the dumping ground of his fantasies.

  Punished for what it had refused him. Cast unconscious into the pit of men.

  My body tortured.

  It wasn’t me.

  It happened to me, but it wasn’t me.

  I kept saying that to myself. Not the way I’d said it on that day in Deputy Sergeant Perret’s office, when my brain had shut down at what I was being told. Now, my brain was functioning. It remembered nothing of what it saw. It didn’t inhabit that body, which was just a shell. My corpse. A doll made of flesh and blood.

  I didn’t see my life there. They had chased it away, driven it out of my body. I have no idea where it was. Was it hiding under the bed, as I was in the nightmares from long ago that warned me that men would come for me, even in my room?

  Or had they destroyed it? Destroyed my life.

  Let me go mad.

  Killed me.

  But no. I was here, alive. Sitting, rigid, in front of the computer. Bystander to my own past, to my own body, filmed by Dominique so he and other men could ejaculate over the body of a woman transformed into a piece of junk.

  Now, at last, these images were turning against them.

  I knew who I was.

  I wanted to see it all. I watched everything that Stéphane had planned to show me. I have no idea how long it took.

  I came out of the study. I said to Jean-Loup, ‘Don’t be upset, I’m going for a walk, I need to be on my own.’ I sidestepped his embrace. I didn’t want him to hug me. I fled his support, his shoulder to lean on, his kindness, all his attempts to assuage my suffering. I mustn’t let it out, I mustn’t crack. If I allow the full extent of my pain to be seen, all my pain, I will drown in it. I have no choice but to be invincible.

  Jean-Loup watched me go.

  Again, I took the path through the forest. Tears rolled down my face. They were dried by the wind, only for fresh tears to flow, and the wind to come back and sting my eyes, sweep away my shame and console me.

  It wasn’t me.

  That woman between sleep and death was not me.

  I walked for a long time until I stopped crying. Then I turned and went back home for lunch.

  Sixteen

  It was dusk, the first of September. We were eating pizza in the courtyard of the house Jean-Loup had rented for us in Verquières, ten miles from Avignon. The children were there, as were our lawyers and their colleagues, and it felt as though we were a team. A team that had come together gradually before the summer, as we felt the deadline drawing closer. In June, we’d all gathered again in Antoine’s offices on the Champs-Élysées. Antoine and Stéphane had explained that although the indictment did not place us all on the same footing – since it focused on the drugging and rapes I had suffered – the court could nonetheless recognise each of us as victims and allow us to sit among the civil parties during the hearings. I felt relieved to hear it stated so plainly. It mattered to me too. What each of us had endured needed to be acknowledged and heard.

  ‘We’re here to support Maman,’ David said. It was sweet to hear – words that brought me back to the family we had once been. We were beginning to find within ourselves the strength to face what lay ahead – together. Everything was going to be difficult, the camera lenses and eyes trained on us, the unfamiliar faces, all of it completely alien – except for Dominique, who would be in the dock.

  ‘Do you have any sunglasses, Gisèle?’ Stéphane asked. ‘You need to shield yourself. You’ll be surrounded by cameras.’

  The next morning, I put on the only ones I had with me, a cheap pair with round frames that I had picked up from a display stand one particularly sunny day. We made our way from the house to the hotel where my lawyers were staying, then walked together to the Palais de Justice. I was between Stéphane and Antoine, smiling and chatting to break the silence and ease the tension, with the children and Jean-Loup following us. Before long, the building came into sight, a crowd of people and a sea of cameras and microphone booms. Jean-Loup lagged behind. It was important he wasn’t seen with us. He was my secret and my future, but now I was walking towards my past.

  We were getting close now. As we passed, the cameramen and photographers stood back at a respectful distance.

  ‘Don’t look at them,’ said Stéphane.

  I couldn’t see them anyway; everything was a blur. I kept a neutral expression. I let them film the woman who had been subjected to two hundred gang rapes instigated by her husband – the woman I had been trying so hard not to be for the last four years, the woman I couldn’t bear to be reduced to, whose face would fill the next day’s newspapers and television screens. I didn’t look at anyone. I didn’t listen. I stepped into the spotlight like a robot, both terrified and determined, my children and my lawyers by my side. I climbed the steps to the Palais de Justice, trying all the while to maintain a protective bubble around myself. The rapid-fire clicking of cameras was followed by the beeps of the electronic security gates, the echoes of our footsteps as we entered the court building, the hubbub of voices. We kept walking. Nobody knew that we were about to request an open hearing. That was the ace up our sleeve. It was my decision, but nevertheless I was afraid. The closer I got to the courtroom, the more terrified I became, but I couldn’t let it show.

  And then I saw them. The thirty-four rapists who had not been held in pre-trial detention had already taken their seats in the courtroom. Some wore masks, others had pulled hoods over their heads; their names had been made public, and they were simmering with rage. A flock of lawyers in black gowns circled them, presenting a united front with the accused and seeming to take up all the space in the room. Though it was the largest in the building, the courtroom felt very small to me, and there was such a horde of them. As I sat down on the bench reserved for us, they felt uncomfortably close. Not one lowered his eyes. The accused men stared at me defiantly. They would all be pleading not guilty.

  Then, under police escort, the men who had been imprisoned since their arrest entered. I watched as Dominique arrived. I saw him before he saw me. Four years had gone by. He looked like a worn-out old man. He walked with a cane and leaned against the glass panel of the witness box as he sat down. He reminded me of Jean Gabin in the role of the convicted murderer in The Dominici Affair. As he slowly scanned the courtroom he caught my eye; neither of us looked away. His expression was sombre, heavy with the weight of his confession. He turned his gaze to our children sitting beside me. Just at that moment Stéphane handed me the document finalising our divorce. All I had to do was sign it, he said. I’d thrown away my wedding ring in Mazan the day after I’d learned the truth, but I would have liked to sign the document together with Dominique, even if that meant going to the prison to do so. I wanted something more solemn to mark the undoing of the day we married.

  Dominique’s lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, came over to greet me. ‘Don’t be too easy on him,’ she muttered. It was Dominique speaking through her, recognising his guilt. With that one brief sentence, I understood that the line I had drawn between him and the other accused men had reached into the courtroom. I would not have to confront him in court, because he was going to confess to all the terrible things he had done to me. I hoped to challenge him, interrogate him, listen to the way he answered his daughter’s questions, but I would not have to argue with him. With the others, I would.

  A piercing bell announced the arrival of the five judges. Everybody stood. Once he had taken his seat and the formalities for opening a trial had been completed, the presiding judge, Roger Arata, turned to me and my lawyers and asked if we wished for a closed hearing. Stéphane rose to his feet and replied that no, his client did not want a closed hearing. Silence fell. All around the courtroom, faces froze in astonishment; the presiding judge’s white moustache did not conceal his disapproval of our decision, which went against established convention; the rapists’ faces crumpled, then hardened to mirror their lawyers’ as they vociferously clamoured for a closed hearing. To our great surprise, the public prosecutor also wanted a closed hearing. Stéphane again stood up to speak, explaining that it was my choice for the proceedings to be held in public and that, according to the law, it was the choice of the victim alone. The judge upheld my decision, the prosecution agreed, and the defence lawyers were left fuming. They were absolutely furious. Stéphane had warned me: they would make me pay for this. I was ready for it.

  Stéphane had been to stay with us in July and had asked me to write down the story of my life, my family and my marriage. When I showed him the first draft, he asked me to rework it. ‘It’s important that everyone understands who you are.’ It hadn’t occurred to me that anyone would be interested, but I did as he said.

  The next thing I had to do was learn how to speak about this in public.

  ‘No, put the papers down, Gisèle, it sounds like you’re reciting. You’re going to have to address the court without any notes,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t be able to.’

  ‘Go off somewhere on your own. Try to imagine yourself in that situation.’

  How many times had I heard these words over the summer! Stéphane left after a few days – he couldn’t stay indefinitely – but I carried on practising without notes, with Jean-Loup facing me in the role of the judge. One day in mid-August I was on a video call with Stéphane, who was in Paris, when the words emerged calmly from my lips – I was talking about the worst days of my life, the hurried departure from Mazan, arriving at the Gare de Lyon – but, at exactly the same moment as always, I began to cry. Stéphane said it would be fine if I broke down during the hearing; everyone would understand I was overwhelmed with emotion.

  ‘No, Stéphane, I don’t want to cry. I am not going to cry on the day.’

  And I did not shed a single tear on September 5th, the day of my first appearance in court. I talked about being a wife, a happy and fulfilled mother. I talked about the day everything collapsed, the descent into hell when I found out what my husband had put me through. The court knew all that already. I was standing in front of experienced lawyers who had carefully combed through all my interviews with the examining magistrate. But that day I needed to personify my story, to tell it loud and clear, to banish from the courtroom all the ludicrous, abject scenarios that the defence would soon brandish. An army of lawyers was champing at the bit – I was bracing myself. They would suggest that I was consenting, that I was complicit in my husband’s games, or simply a drunk. Stéphane sat by my side, ready to prompt me whenever I rushed through something too quickly. I talked about my worsening health, my blackouts, my fear that I was dying, the decade of medical misdiagnoses. It was important not to leave out a single detail. I had to convey my unfathomable shock of that morning of November 2nd 2020 at Carpentras police station, the pain of breaking the news to my children, and the waking nightmare we had been living ever since. I had to make the most of every minute I was granted, because although I was the subject of the trial – the body upon which the crimes had been perpetrated, about to be shown naked on three video screens set up in the courtroom – I was not to be its voice. I had spent the summer practising how to speak in public, but in the end, for the duration of the trial I mostly listened.

  I listened to the defence lawyers make a request that the word ‘rape’ not be used, in order to preserve the presumption of innocence. One proposed ‘sexual relations’. One of the judges suggested ‘sex scene’. I was fuming inside, but from the bench where I sat, I wasn’t allowed to react. I had to restrain myself. All the time. Restrain myself while my lawyers responded. Restrain myself when the presiding judge asked a doctor if my vaginal secretions might be a sign of pleasure. Restrain myself when a female lawyer sneered at a medical examiner testifying to the gravity of my physical condition, ‘Oh, let’s weep for Madame Pelicot, shall we?’ I will not record her name here, nor those of her colleagues, nor those of the defendants. Not out of any consideration for them – their identities are easy enough to find online or in the court records – but so that they will be remembered only for what they are: parrots, deplorable mouthpieces, violent, cowardly little people. I want all that remains of them to be the words they used to trample over me, to reduce one woman – and therefore all women – to absolute submission in the name of male domination.

  ‘I saw a dead woman in the bed. But when I touched her she was warm. I didn’t see her face,’ one of the defendants said.

  ‘You didn’t see her face even when you had your penis in her mouth and she was choking?’ the presiding judge asked.

  An expert witness testified that this particular scene was so violent I could have died. I don’t remember at what point in the trial this exchange took place. But it hardly matters.

  ‘I didn’t have time to shop around, so I just went for whatever came up first. I’m not a rapist, but if I had wanted to rape someone, I’d hardly have gone for a fifty-seven-year-old woman, I would have picked a prettier one,’ said another.

  I listened. It was like being punched.

  I had to squeeze past them during breaks in the proceedings. I heard them talking, not even bothering to lower their voices, naturally buoyed by male camaraderie. I saw them high-fiving each other, going to the café across the street at lunchtime, chatting at the bar, buying rounds of beer, laughing. They bonded with each other simply because they were convinced they had done nothing wrong. And yet they didn’t resemble one another: some were articulate, others could barely string a sentence together in the witness box; there were old men, bald men, men with paunches, men who were young and athletic; one was constantly chewing gum; another had brought along some policeman friends for support. But they did share one thing: a sense of entitlement. An attitude of complete indifference to whatever anyone said or thought, because power had always been on their side.